Helping Women Achieve in Academic Science

Posts tagged ‘women speakers’

This post comes from an awesome WomanOfScience friend of mine. I hope you enjoy!

This post is about one of my first real experiences with gender bias, as a new PI in {life} science.

During my first year of being a new PI, I was invited to participate in a small workshop in my field. There were only about 80 of us, with most of us being PIs. It was an intense 4 day meeting alternating between talks and long, open-ended discussions about important issues in our research area. In many ways, it was fantastic.

However, I quickly noticed something that I found to be a bit concerning. While the organizers commended themselves for ensuring that almost half of the participants were women, I noticed that women almost never spoke during the extensive questions-and-answers sessions after each talk, nor did they ever participate in the lengthy “open” discussion periods. As a new PI in my field, still trying to get the lay of the land, I was hyper-aware of what my female role models were doing. And I was a bit dismayed that even the full professors who were women were not speaking up.

At first, I wondered, “Am I right about this? Am I just not noticing when women speak? Is my own unconscious bias coming through by dismissing their contributions? Or, are women really not speaking?” So, during the second day, I began to keep count. I made a tally every time someone spoke up, whether it was a male or female.

By the end of that second day, it was clear. Less than 10% of the questions or comments were from women, despite the fact that over 40% of the attendees were women. And several of the few questions from women were from me, the most junior female PI in the room. (I have always been pushed to ask questions of speakers, by my graduate and post-doctoral mentors, so I try to speak up as much as possible.)

But I was disturbed that women were not being equally represented in the discussions. One thing that I noticed was that, oftentimes, the men in the room seemed completely unfazed to spout some random off-the-wall idea that potentially made no sense at all, just to get conversation started. They weren’t concerned that their idea might sound idiotic. They weren’t concerned that their words might mean that they were incompetent.

In my (limited) experience, WOMEN DO NOT DO THIS. Women are careful to only state ideas that they perceive to be “important”. And since women appear to be uncertain whether their ideas actually are important, they rarely speak up at all. Why is this?

One answer comes from a really interesting article that I read just before I went to this conference.It discussed how transgendered people who have transitioned can provide interesting insights into how men and women are perceived differently. My favorite quote in the article comes from Joan Roughgarden, a biologist at Stanford who used to be male until late in her career. She says “men are assumed to be competent until proven otherwise, whereas a woman is assumed to be incompetent until she proves otherwise.”

Unfortunately, I have found this to be the case. I will admit, I was not nearly as aware of this bias when I was a graduate student at a top tier research university. In my class of around 30 students, 75% of us were women. I was not even aware of gender bias when I was a postdoc. Of course, I had heard of and read about unconscious bias. But I had not seemed to experience it myself or noticed any impact on my own career. It was only once I became a PI that I began to notice gender bias in my workplace in any real way.

I have long heard that one way to combat gender bias is to make sure that more people are aware of it, when it occurs, so we can at least pay attention to our unconscious bias and figure out ways to deal with it. Thus, at the bar at the conference that second evening, after I had discovered that only 10% of the questions were from women, I decided to bring it up among a small circle of friendly colleagues. It seemed natural to do so. It was a group of just a few of us, people in my sub-field who have known each other for years, a mix of 1 man and 3 women. Someone else had brought up the fact that women and men were almost equally represented at the meeting, and “Wasn’t that so great?” So I then replied, “Yeah, it’s great that the organizers did such a wonderful job. But you know what’s a little funny? Women are only asking about 10% of the questions, and they aren’t participating at all in the open discussions.” The women in my group made no reply. But the man said, “Are you sure? That can’t be right.” And I answered, “No, I am right. I actually counted today.” The guy was silent for a moment, looked at me right in the eyes, and said, “Well, then I think that you should spend more time thinking about science and less time counting how many questions are being asked by women.”

I was dumbstruck. I had asked more questions in that group than any other woman in the room, and his response is that I should be asking even more? And that it wasn’t possible for me to think about science and tally male/female counts at the same time? And that he didn’t see that it was an issue that women weren’t speaking up? And that he didn’t respect the fact that I might see it as an issue, as a new woman to the field? Two years later, this guy is still a close friend and colleague, a true supporter of me and my career. But he appears to be clearly unaware of gender bias in the scientific world, and how its insidious nature can undermine the confidence of women scientists.

My own response to my observation has been to continue to do what I can – to speak up when I can – to try to be a role model for other, younger women scientists to speak up and not be afraid. My students are REQUIRED to ask questions at seminars and meetings. And I teach them to not be concerned about sounding stupid. That I prefer them to be perceived as engaged and perhaps naive, rather than silent. Because if you are silent, you aren’t bringing anything at all to the table.

So, my call to other women scientists is to speak up. Speak your mind. Even when you are unsure of your ideas. Share your questions with others. Isn’t that what science is about? Asking questions that we don’t know the answers to?

More recently, now that I’ve been a PI for longer, I’ve become even more comfortable asking questions and speaking up. At the last meeting that I went to (about 300 attendees), I was again the most visible woman. I probably asked 2-3 questions each day of the 3 day meeting. I thought that most of my questions were pretty stupid. But I asked them anyway, especially when no one else seemed to be interested in doing so. At the end of the meeting, a huge leader in my field came up to me and told me that he had to meet me and share with me that he was so impressed with my “wonderful questions” and that I had been “more impressive than any junior female PI he has ever seen at a conference before in his 30+ years” of being a PI.

While I was glad that he noticed me and complimented my participation, and I am hopeful that my visibility might be a good model for the many, many young women in the audience that asked no questions at all, I do still find it a rather sad state of affairs that this guy had never seen a junior woman ask multiple questions at conferences before (or, at least, not recall seeing it). I will note that he (and everyone else that I spoke with) was also incredibly impressed by my grad student who accompanied me, as she asked several questions, as well. She was the only female graduate student to ask any questions during this meeting.

And while I’m hopeful that other women saw our examples, I also am concerned that most women are still too insecure and uncertain to ask questions themselves. Or, they simply do not realize just how valuable it can be to be visible. But one thing I’ve learned is that succeeding in academia (and life, really) requires me to confront my fears head on – to run into them. I used to be terrified – terrified – of public speaking. My fight or flight response was on full blast when I asked questions, when I spoke in front of people. But I forced myself to do it anyway. When I commended my student after she asked questions by telling her how brave she was, she replied that she was not brave, that rather, she “was terrified.” I explained that being brave does not mean that you are not afraid. Being brave means you do something EVEN THOUGH you are afraid.

So, I now make it one of my main goals to talk about my own insecurities, my own fears, and the importance of speaking up and being visible, whenever I have the opportunity to speak with students and postdocs. I am hopeful that the more times women hear it, the more likely there will be change. And that someday, when I go to a meeting, there will be just as many women asking questions as men.

Thanks so much for this awesome post! What do you think? Comment or write your own post! To get an email each time I post, push the +Follow button.

I love your conferences! They are in such wonderful locations. Many times I get to escape the cold or wet of my home institution to work on science with others in a warm, exotic or just plain different location. It is wonderful and really helps me to be creative and explore new areas of science that I might not be exposed to otherwise. It is great for my career to see and be seen, to talk to other scientists about not only science, but also management, mentoring, and other career issues.

I have a request, though.

Can you maybe have at least one keynote speaker who is a woman? It really means a lot to me, personally, if one of the keynotes is not a macho, argumentative man, but rather a loud, bossy, argumentative woman. They are role models – still. I am surprised when this doesn’t happen.

Can there be more than one woman in each room? I literally had to give someone the finger to get the point across that I wanted to speak in a session at a recent meeting. It was all in good fun, as I am notoriously PUNK ROCK but the point was clear: let me talk, too! I am still astonished that this continues to happen, and it is not your fault that another participant did this, but it is better when the room isn’t such a “sausage-fest.”

Can we have bath tubs? I know not all women feel this way, so I will not speak for all, but I, personally, really want to have a bathtub. Here are my reasons:

I like taking baths. It is relaxing. I sit in there for a while, soaking, reading, unwinding. This is often especially important at meetings when relaxing and unwinding can give you time for your creativity to soar.

I like shaving my legs. No use being in an exotic, warm location and not being able to shave your legs. This is mostly a woman-only issue. Sure, I could shave in the shower, but I always miss spots, and I cannot see because I cannot wear my glasses in the shower. I guess I could not shave, but that is not really socially acceptable considering the hairiness level I allow my legs to approach when I am at home and always wearing pants. I suppose I could shave before coming, but I didn’t know there wouldn’t be a bath tub, and I used all my personal shaving time taking care of my children, getting my class ready for while I was away, and packing. I would love the opportunity to shave at the conference.

Overall, these functions are wonderful and fruitful for my career, and despite the drawbacks I listed, I would never stop going, participating, and working at your conferences. They are essential for my career development and maintenance.

Thank you for your attention,

WomanOfScience

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There has been a flurry of conversations recently about women speakers at conferences. This was all spurred by a recent article in Salon.com about the fact that a “theoretical chemistry” conference had ZERO women speakers. Here is the article. The subsequent, real, and valid outrage by women in the field resulted in a boycott of the conference by women of the field. It seems odd that we have to keep having the same conversations about how it is important to have diversity, yadda yadda. And women have to keep fighting to get invited to talk at conferences in their field.

When this situation occurs, the OrganizingGuys always claim that they invited A woman, but she turned them down. What are they to do?

As usual, they should ASK A WOMAN for the solution to this problem. No one asked me, but I am going to give my opinion anyway, because I have an advice blog! Here is a solution to the OrganizingGuys:

Let’s say, you want a program with a person you does fields/subfields/specialities we will call A, B, C, and D. Because there are so few women – especially at a certain level – there may only be 1-2 women in each of those fields/subfields/specialities. What is the first inclination for most organizers? Typically, you might invite 3 men who specialize in A, B, and C. Then you ask the one woman who does D. And, guess what, that woman cannot come because she is doing 100 other things. Now, there are “no more women who do D,” so you “have to ask a man.” (This statement may be debatable, but let’s assume that is true for some fields like “theoretical chemistry.”)

Here is how you can get more women: ASK THE WOMEN FIRST. Then backfill with men. If you ask your favorite woman in fields A, B, C, and D first, and some say no, you are likely to still get a woman. Whichever women say no, replace with a guy. The worst case scenario? A session of ALL WOMEN? Which doesn’t sound bad at all, actually. If all 4 women say “no” you could have a back-up list of women, but I feel the likelihood is pretty low that they would ALL say no unless you are competing your event against another event in your field (bad idea for conference/event planning in general).

This solution is very easy and results in a high representation of women, assuming that is actually what you want.

In an interesting side note to this story, I was recently asked to participate in a proposed session for a major national conference in a field related to my own. The organizers, two women, specifically put together an entire program with all women. Their goal was not only great science, but also a nod to the women in the field. Their session was rejected and told it was “not diverse” enough. I do not see one field in science where women are the at majority or even at parity with men at the faculty level. Please correct me if I am wrong. Thus, I feel like any session that is trying to bring the inequality of women in the field to light by having a session with mostly women should be applauded – not rejected – for their efforts. Alas, although we are ready to accept that “there were no available or acceptable women” resulting in a session with 100% men, we cannot accept a session with 100% women?

I also want to point out that the plight of minorities is EVEN WORSE. Many scientific societies cannot even publish statistics on minority graduation rates at the PHD level, because there are too few, and the results can be directly linked to the 1-2 minorities graduating each year. It’s not exactly anonymous aggregate data when there are 0-3 of you.

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